Pag3 Thirteen
BADIN BULLETIN
V>s
/
i'4:f ffi'K
'V^f;
r' ,Tt\V.%' -f V /-^A^:
TOWER LINE—WINTER OF 1917
sticking out. We were getting along' '
finely, and out of the eight stacks of
“pie pans” (there were more than a
hundi'ed pans in each stack) we had all
filled but one, when what was our con
sternation to find that the last bottle
electrolyte had been cracked in its
ci'ate, and all the juice had leaked out—
Was dry as William Jennings’ cellar.
^®11, there was no time to be lost, and
the only way to fill the last stack was
get a little out of each one of the
pans we had already filled. It was a
Piizzler just how to do it and be sure
^*^at it was done right, for too little in
JUst one pan meant that the whole job
spoiled. The way we did it was to
take a rubber tube, just long enough to
^old the right amount, stick one end in
between two pans (they set so close into
another that you couldn’t see the
liquid in them), and suck on the tube
^*^til you tasted something, pinch the
tube, pull it out, and blow the stuff into
bottle. Pete had the job of sucking,
^'^d he was so sleepy (it was almost
^oi’ning then, and most of us had lost
^luite a bit of sleep in the last ten days
^*^yhow) that he must have wasted about
^ ciuart of the stuff swallowing it; but
got enough to finish.
Then came the starting up. That was
in line ,with everything else that
had gone on. All the equipment in the
building was damp, but we tried to get
started without taking time to “dry out.”
Then, to make matters worse, our operat
ing force was on pins and needles so to
speak. Billy Crow, Russell, Cline, and
Shipwash had been sent to Maryville a
short time previously, to be initiated
into the mysteries of rotary station ope
ration. They got an eyeful, an earful,
and just about a b ful of rotary
station operation while they were over
there. They saw lots of fireworks, and
I guess the fellows at Maryville stuffed
them to the gills with tales of moie
fireworks and the terrible things that
went on around a rotary station. When
they got back, they were “Rotary shy.
If you snapped your fingers behind one
of their backs while he was in the sta
tion he’d jump three feet in the air and
be half way to the door before he real
ized that he wasn’t really injured. It
didn’t take much of that sort of behavior
(and they told some good tales, too)
to get the other boys skittish; and the
night we started things turning there
were a good many pairs of weak knees
wabbling around the place.
We had a pretty good audience to see
' the start-up. Most all the Big Bugs
were hanging around, lots of inquisitive
persons of all sorts, and even some ladies.
It had just gotten dark enough to make
fire show up well, and about the second
switch we threw the fireworks started.
Not many of the assembled watchers
had ever seen real fireworks before, and
they began to thin out immediately.
Most of the trouble was caused by the
failure of damp insulation in minox
places that didn’t do any serious damage,
but for awhile we had the biggest hum
ming, spitting, and flashing you ever
heard, v/ith an occasional boom and roar
that would rattle the windows and cause
hearts to quake worse than ever. Then
when Billy Crow got mixed up with a
switch that closed at the wrong time,
and was carried home with his head
and arms swathed in bandages (he wasn’t
seriously hurt, just singed up a bit), all
the audience left; that didn’t have to
stay—and some of those left, too.
Then we had it, all that night, the
next day and night, and the next day,
drying out apparatus and fixing parts
that had gone down and trying them out
again. It was right funny seeing Mr.
Beers in his undershirt working away
on a field rheostat at two a. m. None
of us got much sleep those two nights,
and the whole gang was just about all
in. I afforded the boys some amusement
by getting the colic or something, and
thinking I was poisoned. They carried
me to the first aid, and then started to
take me home in a car, but on the way
I got all right, so we turned around and
came back. Then I got shot in the ear
with a fire extinguisher. Something had
caught fire behind a switchboard. I
stepped behind to put it out, and just
as I emerged from behind the board, still
looking back, Mike Foley rushed up with
a J. M. extinguisher pumped up to burst
ing point, and let drive squarely in my
ear, not a foot away. It knocked me
down flat, and there I lay, mad as the
Dickens, for I could taste the stuff in
my mouth, and was sure it had shot
right on through my ear drum. I guess
it would have made a goat laugh to
see me writhing around on the ground
with Zipp pouring ice water in my ear
out of a dipper, Janitschek rushing all
the way from the Laboratory with a
bottle of sweet oil. Dr. Rainey rushing
up with a- gripful of tools and medicine,
and about thirty men standing around in
a circle wondering if I’d live through it.
However, we soon decided that I wasn’t
injured, and we all got back to work
again.
There was a whole-souled sigh of re
lief at noon the third day, when we
choked the Pot Room breaker, and sent
the juice to 22 without blowing the roof
off of it. Not that our troubles were
over by any means, but we had started
making aluminum, so the main excite
ment was transferred to the Pot Room,
UNLOADING ONE OF THE BIG ROTARY
CONVERTERS—SPRING OF 1916,
STATION NO. 19